China marks major tunnel milestone for Central Asia railway bypassing Russia
Conceived in 1997, the 500km China-Kyrgyzstan-Uzbekistan railway will offer the shortest land route from China to the Middle East and Europe
This marks the first milestone for the flagship project under Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative, offering China a critical trade corridor bypassing Russia.
The 210-metre (690-foot) tunnel was the first drilled through in the Kyrgyz section since full-scale work began in June 2025, China’s state broadcaster CCTV reported on Saturday. Overall progress on the section had reached 17 per cent, it said.
The CKU Railway spans over 500km (310 miles), including about 305km in Kyrgyzstan alone. It runs from Kashgar in China’s western Xinjiang region through the mountains of Kyrgyzstan before terminating in Andijan, Uzbekistan.
It will also provide a vital trade gateway for southern Xinjiang, according to CCTV.
For landlocked Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, the line will secure direct overland access to Chinese and Asia-Pacific markets.
Construction has begun on 27 tunnels, 43 bridges and 88 roadbed sections, while work on 20 railway stations is also under way, according to Chinese state news agency Xinhua.
Conceived in 1997, the three-way joint venture has faced decades of delay due to engineering hurdles in difficult terrain, technical gauge disputes, and delicate geopolitical sensitivities.
However, as the prolonged war in Ukraine weakens Russia’s strategic hold on Central Asia, Bishkek has increasingly prioritised securing alternative foreign capital, according to a Times of Central Asia report during Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov’s visit to Beijing in February last year.
Meanwhile, Moscow’s economic ties with Beijing remain deep, with Western sanctions over its 2022 invasion of Ukraine having pushed Russia closer to China. Russian outlet Izvestia reported on Sunday that Moscow was expanding existing rail crossings and discussing new highways to accommodate growing bilateral trade.
To overcome long-standing technical hurdles, the CKU railway project has adopted a dual-gauge compromise, according to CCTV.
A 167.5km stretch from the Chinese border to Makmal in Kyrgyzstan will feature China’s standard gauge, while the remaining nearly 140km towards Uzbekistan will retain the Soviet-era broad gauge, supported by a transshipment hub at Makmal.
“The significance of this arrangement is that China’s … standard gauge enters the heart of Central Asia for the first time,” Li Lifan, director of the Centre for Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Studies at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, told CCTV.
Xi Jihong, the project’s chief engineer, said the CKU railway was likely to be ready for operation by June 2031.
However, Uzbekistan is pushing for a tighter timeline. Deputy transport minister Jasurbek Choriev said in June that they aimed to speed up work to complete the railway by 2028, local news outlet the Tashkent Times reported.